The FBI hacked Australian computers as part of child porn sting

The FBI is said to have hacked thousands of computers around the world, and it did all of this based on just one warrant. And some deem the warrant to be illegal.

However, reports indicate that as part of the operation, they also hacked some computers which were in Australia. This also highlighted the problems and loopholes that the law enforcement agencies have been using to get into some computers which are all outside their jurisdiction, and in all of this they are using malware.

The case was codenamed at the time, Operation Pacifier and it was going around the investigation which was undertaken by the FBI against one of the biggest ever dark website child pornography sites. The website was called Playpen.

The FBI seized the website back in 2”15, and rather than shut it down, they decided to let it run from one of their government servers so that they could deploy one network investigative technique. This is one piece of malware that the agency used so that they could identify the visitors.

The malware which was used by the agency was making use of the Tor Browser exploit. Through this they managed to grab one of the suspected Playpen’s user IP address, the MAC address and various other technical information needed. They also obtained about 1,000 US IP addresses and they managed to distribute the information which they got to other agencies. They spread information of the suspects to their foreign partner agencies.

The Australian Federal Police (AFP) was one of the groups which was sent the information to. After a procession of the Freedom of Information request which was filed by reporters, the AFP argued that they had a wealth of data on the operation. This also included a large PROMIS case file. PROMIS is the case management tool which the AFP officers use to catalogue their investigations and a store intelligence.

In the first searches of the documented, the AFP managed to find about 6,000 MB of file data and there was also one PROMIS case which had about 2000 case note entries. The agency also confirmed that the files they had gotten referred to the international referrals which the AFP had received and were related to the operation.

Australia is the latest country to be revealed as part of the Operation Pacifier. One Europol presentation showed that the case had generated about 3,200 cases alone and 39 of those were related to Denmark. Another presentation showed that Colombian police had also been involved in the sting.